Disgraced newspaper publisher Conrad Black, whose former ownership of The Daily Telegraph turned him into a bitter Murdoch rival, thinks his old foe is more like another polarizing historical figure – French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

Like Napoleon, Murdoch is a "great bad man," Black wrote in a column Wednesday for the Financial Times. "It is as wrong to dispute his greatness as his badness."

Black, who was convicted of fraud in 2007 and still has some prison time to serve, wrote that it would be "astonishing" if Murdoch's British newspapers didn't commit crimes while "reveling in the climate of immunity that has been the group's modus operandi for decades."

Although he stopped short of calling him a crook, Black lambasted Murdoch as an "an exploiter of the discomfort of others" and "a malicious myth-maker, an assassin of the dignity of others and of respected institutions, all in the guise of anti-elitism."

That sounds like an apt description of the Fox News Channel (especially that last part, "in the guies of anti-elitism").